The increase of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines could be partly attributed to UK variant, a health expert said on Wednesday.

John Wong, an epidemiologist with the Inter-Agency Task Force’s (IATF) sub-technical working group on data analytics, in the "Laging Handa" public briefing, said the UK variant increases transmissibility of the coronavirus disease.

"So, maybe part of the surge that we're experiencing now is due to the UK variant," he said.

For the past several days, the number of COVID-19 cases in the country has reached over 3,000 per day, prompting the government to remind people to strictly follow the minimum health standards, such as wearing of face mask and face shield, frequent washing of hands, and observance of physical distancing.

Aside from UK variant, authorities have also reported the presence of the South African variant.

According to Wong, South African and UK variants have different effects.

"The South African variant makes the virus more resistant to the vaccine but does not increase transmissibility. The UK variant increases transmissibility," he said.

He warned that if there are more UK variants of COVID-19 in Metro Manila, the projection of OCTA Research of 6,000 per day by end of March may happen.

"In certain cities in NCR (National Capital Region), we'll see if the UK variant becomes the dominant strain, meaning it infects more than 50 percent of the cases, we can have nine times more cases after a month. So we have to take precautions to avoid this," he said.

He said the Philippine Genome Center continues to collect samples from COVID-19 cases to determine how widespread the South African and UK variants are.

Meanwhile, on the reported homegrown COVID-19 variant in Cebu, Anna Ong-Lim, an expert member of the Department of Health's Technical Advisory Group, in the same public briefing, said the PGC has been monitoring the report.

She said they have reported the variant to the World Health Organization.

Lim said a group within the WHO would check the variant to find out if it is different or unique only in the Philippines or if it is similar to those discovered abroad.

But whatever variant it would be, Lim said what is important is the vigilance and observance of the minimum health protocols among people to prevent infection. Celerina Monte/DMS